The Federal Government said it is planning to begin administering the COVID-19 vaccine on Nigerians before the end of March.
Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency NPHCDA, Dr. Faisal Shuaib disclosed this in a letter sent to Media Executives inviting them to a sensitization meeting on the COVID-19 vaccines.
The letter reads:-
“The management of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency NPHCDA wishes to express profound gratitude for your unflinching support to the ongoing effort to stop COVID-19 transmission in Nigeria.
“This is to inform you that as part of the preparatory activities, NPHCDA has scheduled a sensitization meeting with Media Gatekeepers as critical stakeholders in this plan”.
The meeting which would good via Zoom is slated for this Friday.
Shuaib had at a briefing of the Presidential Taskforce PTF on COVID-19 in Tuesday said Nigeria will take delivery of 100,000 doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech approved COVID-19 vaccines by the end of January.
He said:-
“In the first phase through the COVAX facility, we expect to receive approximately 100,000 doses of the Pfizer and bioNtech vaccine by the end of January”.
According to him, Nigeria expects to receive free 42 million doses of vaccines in the second phase through the COVAX facility being administered by ten Global Vaccines Alliance, GAVI.
“The second phase will be a combination of all the available approved vaccines currently in the market but this will cover only about 20 per cent of Nigeria’s population”, he added.
While Shuaib disclosed that to completely eradicate the pandemic, about 70 per cent of the total population needs to receive the vaccines, adding that only about 40 per cent will be vaccinated in 2021, while the remaining 30 per cent will be covered in 2022.